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Der traurige Mönch, S348

Introduction

Der traurige Mönch (Ballade von Nicolaus Lenau) (‘The Sad Monk’) is the first intimation that Liszt gives us of the direction of the music of his old age: much of this piece, which is famous to musicologists if not familiar to audiences, is built entirely on whole-tone scales and harmonies (this two years before the birth of Debussy), and its other harmonic vocabulary makes much unsettling use of the augmented triad. Although the final cadences give us something like a cadence into C minor, ending on a first inversion chord, this piece is truly atonal – something which Liszt would not approach again until his very late works – and provides an accompaniment which far outstrips Lenau’s poem in its intensity.

Leslie Howard’s recordings of Liszt’s complete piano music, on 99 CDs, is one of the monumental achievements in the history of recorded music. Remarkable as much for its musicological research and scholarly rigour as for Howard’s Herculean piano p ...» More

In Sweden stands a grey tower, Sheltering owls, eagles; Rain, lightning and storm have played on it For nine hundred years; Whatever human life was there, Whatever joy and sadness, is no more.

The rain pours, a rider approaches, He spurs his horse’s flanks. He has lost his way In twilight and thought. The wood writhes, howling in the wind Like a whipped child.

Ill-famed is the tower in the land, For at night, by moonlight, A ghost haunts there in monk’s habit, With a face so sad; And whoever looks the monk in the eye, Will become melancholy unto death.

But without fear or horror, Into the tower’s vaults steps the rider. He leads the black stallion in And jokes merrily with his dear horse: “Would we not rather be With ghosts than with wind and rain?”

The saddle and the wet bridle He unbuckles from his horse. He lays down in the desolate room, His cloak upon the floor, And stokes the remains of the fire With strongly built hands.

And as he sleeps, and as he dreams, Near the midnight hour His horse awakens him, snorting and rearing, It is light around the tower. The wall glows as if ablaze; The man takes hold of himself.

The horse flares its nostrils, It bares its teeth in fear, The black horse, trembling, sees the ghost And its mane bristles high; Now the rider sees it too And makes the ancient sign of the cross.

The monk has appeared before him, So plaintively still, so terrible, As though the world cries silently through him, So sad, oh so sad! The rider stares fixedly at him And is overcome with pity.

The great and mysterious pain That trembles through nature, Which a bleeding heart might divine, Which despair senses But cannot reach – that pain appears In the monk’s eyes, and the rider weeps.

He calls out, “O tell me, what ails you? What moves you so deeply?” But as the monk lowers his face, And moves his pallid lips To make his monstrous speech, He calls out terrified: “Be still, be still!”

The monk has vanished, the morning grows grey, The rider emerges from within: He speaks no further, He can feel only death. The horse refuses its fodder, And they are both done for.

And as the sun sinks in the evening, Their hearts beating with fear, They see the monk in every bush, And all the leaves mourn. The air is thick with pain and woe – The black horse trudges into the lake.